CEN22LA402 · MD Helicopters Inc 369E
City of Houston Police Dept MD Helicopters Inc 369E · Accident: hard landing during autorotation
From William P. Hobby Airport (HOU) to Pearland Regional Airport (LVJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA402
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Government
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
MD Helicopters Inc 369E
- Aircraft type
- MD Helicopters 369
- Category
- Helicopter
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N1576F
- Operator
- City of Houston Police Dept
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From William P. Hobby Airport (HOU), Houston, TXTo Pearland Regional Airport (LVJ), Pearland, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 16 years (built 2006)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Public Aircraft
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Autorotation
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Hard landing
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that he and the commercial pilot receiving instruction were practicing simulated autorotations with power recovery. During one autorotation, as the helicopter was flared at the conclusion of the autorotation, the flight instructor increased the engine throttle and waited for the pilot receiving instruction to increase collective. When he did not feel the collective control move, the flight instructor pulled up on the collective, but the helicopter struck the ground before it could ascend. The pilot receiving instruction stated that during the flare, he did not feel the engine power increase like he had felt on previous autorotations; the helicopter sank fast and struck the ground. The main rotor of the helicopter severed the tail boom during the hard landing. Examination of the helicopter and a subsequent engine test run in a test cell did not reveal any anomalies that would explain a loss of engine power. Based on the available evidence, the accident was the result of the pilot receiving instruction’s failure to increase collective at the conclusion of the autorotation and the flight instructor’s delayed remedial response, which resulted in a hard landing.
Probable cause
The pilot receiving instruction’s failure to maintain aircraft control, and the flight instructor’s delayed remedial action, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA402
- Event ID
- 20220830105830
- Case number
- CEN22LA402
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2022-08-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 76a60b391ecf202d631c091e96fac41c01e96b8e2ee777fdd11ed5aa5cd60cbb; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:50:30.470Z.